VTI champions MEMS timing chips

PORTLAND, Ore. &#151;The world leader in combo micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) chips that house an accelerometer die and a gyroscope die in the same package for automotive stability control will announce next week that it has entered the consumer market for gyroscopes and silicon-MEMS oscillators.

"We are leveraging our experience in high-performance automotive MEMS gyroscopes to give our consumer gyros a competitive advantage," said Markku Hirvonen, president and CEO of VTI.

VTI claims its consumer gyro will be smaller in size, have lower power consumption and be higher performance than other consumer gyroscopes which are not based on automotive-grade designs. Its target market is mobile handsets, gaming consoles and television remote controls.

The company likewise claims that its entry into the silicon MEMS timing chip market was motivated by its high-performance automotive-grade vibratory gyros in which the Coriolis force can be detected by a transducer as the plane of oscillation is rotated.

Combined accelerometer and gyroscope—two separate die in the same package—propelled VTI Technologies into an over 50 percent market share for automotive stability control systems.

"We have used our experience with automotive gyros, which use the Coriolis force, to make major advances in accuracy and stability for our MEMS timing devices," said the founder of timing device group, Scott Smyser, vice president and general manager of VTI Technologies Inc. (Pasedena, Calif.)

VTI maintains its own fab for its automotive and medical MEMS chips, where it pioneered what it calls "chip on MEMS"—a process that flip-chips an ASIC with solder bumps onto a MEMS die. For its consumer MEMS gyros and oscillators, however, the company has transferred its chip-on-MEMS process to a Chinese foundry for mass production.